In Flanders Fields: Poems of the First World War Review

Poetry is something I discovered in college. Sure, I knew what poetry was before that. I even enjoyed a few. But I really started to understand and appreciate poetry when I took a Lit. class. Of course, my own efforts to craft poems have been dreadful. But I went to school with a lovely girl who writes poetry for a living.

While perusing the shelves at Half Price Books, I came across a series of books containing poetry from the major wars. Pretty much everyone knows "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae. It's everywhere on Armistice Day. But there was a lot of poetry going on during WWI. The poems in this book were all written by soldiers who fought and died in the war. Most never saw their work published. All offer a unique view of the world. Some of them had an unbelievably bright outlook on life. Many were able to tap into a very dark window of the universe.

Poetry has the unique ability of speaking from the soul. I'm constantly amazed at people who are able to use the most innocuous of words to articulate their feelings. True, some poems still just make no sense to me. But others... I'd like to share some of my favorites from this book.

The Answer

by J.M. Langstaff

O the Tyrant Lord has drawn his sword,

And has flung the scabbard away.

He has said the word that loosed his horde

To ravage, destroy and slay.

'Then where are those who will dare oppose

The blast of my fury's flame?'

But a salty breeze swept across the seas,

And back the clear answer came:

'We have heard the boast of your mighty host,

And slaves will we ne'er become;

Let our deeds declare what our hearts will dare,

We come! We come! We come!'

The Unconquered Dead

by John McCrae

"defeated, with great loss."

Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame

Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;

Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame

Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.

That day of battle in the dusty heat

We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing

Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,

And we the harvest of their garnering.

Some yielded, No, not we! Not we, we swear

By these our wounds; this trench upon the hill

Where all the shell-strewn earth is seamed and bare,

Was ours to keep; and lo! we have it still.

We might have yielded, even we, but death

Came for our helper; like a sudden flood

The crashing darkness fell; our painful breath

We drew with gasps amid the choking blood.

The roar fell faint and farther off, and soon

Sank to a foolish humming in our ears,

Like crickets in the long, hot afternoon

Among the wheat fields of the olden years.

Before our eyes a boundless wall of red

Shout through by sudden streaks of jagged pain!

Then a slow-gathering darkness overhead

And rest came on us like a quiet rain.

Not we the conquered! Not to us the shame,

Who hold our earthen ramparts, nor shall cease

To hold them ever; victors we, who came

In that fierce moment to our honoured peace.

Mental Cases

by Wilfred Owen

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, — but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished

Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

— These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.

Memory fingers in their hair of murders,

Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.

Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,

Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

Always they must see these things and hear them,

Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,

Carnage incomparable and human squander

Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented

Back into their brains, because on their sense

Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;

Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh

— Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,

Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.

— Thus their hands are plucking at each other;

Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;

Snatching after us who smote them, brother,

Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.